But something suddenly cuts through the umming and ahhing over growth forecast revisions, the reaction from homebuyers and the housing industry. Darling drops a bombshell on the West Country, festival goers and teenage boozers the nation over by announcing a rise in the duty on cider of 10% above inflation, which could mean 10p more a pint, according to industry experts. From midnight on Sunday, people!

Our resident cider expert (not her actual job title) has also pointed out that this is bad news for the industry, which has just been getting back on its feet in recent years thanks largely to the "Magners effect". A big price rise could come as a huge blow particularly to the smaller artisan makers who already have to charge a lot for their wares – a cidermaker recently worked out for us that given the true cost of producing his 75cl bottles of perry he would have to price it at £10 a go to make a profit - with tax on top of that, the price is rivalling supermarket champagne - and few people would pay that much.

Henry Chevallier, chair of the National Association of Cider Makers (NACM) fears that this will reverse the growth cider has seen over the last years - "cider makers have invested millions to plant thousands of acres of new orchards in the last decade," he said, pointing out that orchards take years to yield a return, and a decline in sales - and falling demand for apples - would result in a huge loss to the rural economy and the environment.

The tax is presumably intended to dissuade young people from drinking cheap, high alcohol drinks, an attack on binge drinking that was also suggested by the Tories last year. But haven't our cider drinking habits moved on a bit in recent years?

There have been plenty of those associations with cider over the decades, as the tweets on White Lightning and Diamond White remind us - my own teenage Saturday nights were sometimes accompanied by a shared bottle of Merrydown - but this is hardly all that cider is. Like many people, after years of abstaining, I recently rediscovered the joys of a good fruity dry cider, a sparkling perry, much softer and more enjoyable to my mind than champagne. Given the numbers of people who love the drink and treat it as they do wine, which is often higher in alcohol, why should people pay more?

It's perhaps worth reminding Mr Darling that when the cider bill of 1763 was first passed there was also instant reaction from the West Country, with riots breaking out and widespread outrage over the tax. If a similar protest does in fact take place, no prizes for guessing which Somerset band will be leading the action.